A touch of Fall in the air today. Cloudy day, cool breeze, cold rain. 

My kind of morning.

I know the dark and moody weather is on its way. These days it seems to match many of our moods. There is sunshine deep inside every one of us, but as the days shorten it seems to hang around with its friend Cloudy more and more often.

This weather tends to encourage more contemplation, more introspection, more struggling for inspiration. I know it’s the cycle of life, and we all go through it, but the older I get the more interesting this cycle gets.

I think our bodies automatically shift gears in fall, storing nuts and fat and ideas for the days when we are hiding behind three feet of snow.  Memories of family and friends and those we have lost seem to hang around a little longer. We can snuggle more with our pets without breaking out in a hot sweat.

As I contemplate this snuggling, reflective mode, I think of my fellow writer and poet Ivor. A wonderful writer and human being, he lives “down under” and is probably looking out his window hoping the temperatures soon warm up so he can walk around in short sleeves again. Funny how all of us can be on the same reflective wavelength yet our weather be so different.

Do you make plans for each season? Do you have projects that work better in one season than another? Books you want to read that you’ve left until under-blanket-time? A short story or crocheting you’ve been mulling around in your head that can’t come out until the temperature drops below 30 degrees?

I do love this time of year. I have a  few projects that don’t take a lot of energy or sunshine to carry out. I want to try to draw one of those pictures full of designs and lines like my last Sunday Evening Art Gallery artist (Rachael Pease). I have wind swirls I want to make for art fairs next year (if they ever come back), I’m even planning on rereading Shogun again (1,192 pages). I also have started taking long walks in the gray, listening to my creaking bones along with the birds and wind (the creaky bones are loudest).

What are your plans for the next season?